Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2008/02/08/last_word.php
Friday, February 8, 2008
Compiled by Katherine J. Murray
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
—Igor Stravinsky
The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.
—Allan Bloom
I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
—Lord Chesterfield
Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.
—Otto von Bismarck
I think I don’t regret a single ‘excess’ of my responsive youth–I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace.
—Henry James
Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.
—Patrick Henry
Four-fifths of all our troubles would disappear if we would only sit down and keep still.
—Calvin Coolidge
If man does find the solution for world peace, it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.
—George C. Marshall
It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions.
—Marcel Proust
Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.
—Theodore Roosevelt
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
—James Madison
It is clear that not in one thing alone, but in many ways equality and freedom of speech are a good thing.
—Herodotus
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
—Winston Churchill
Before you can win a game, you have to not lose it.
—Chuck Noll
Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.
—Confucius
Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good.
—Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.
—Daniel Webster
Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.
—Ludwig van Beethoven
The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.
—Clarence Thomas
People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.
—G. K. Chesterton
My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.
—Duke Ellington
Truth is a great flirt.
—Franz Liszt
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
—Victor Hugo
The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.
—Douglas MacArthur
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
—Marcus Aurelius
If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.
—George Bernard Shaw